The last of the 1970 Falcons were sold before the end
of the product year, which put Ford into a dilemma. They did not want to
produce any more of that model because it would be phased out and replaced
with a new "compact" to be named Maverick for the next product year. The
tooling "dies" for the body panels were already partially dismantled to
ready for shipping to Australia, where this body style was to motor on
into the '80s with some very interesting power options, but that is another
story. The problem was that the Maverick was just not ready in time. The
answer was to put some Falcon "badges" onto specially selected Fairlane/Torino
bodies and call them 70 1/2 Falcons. There were not many, but some that
were built were interesting. One odd quirk of this solution was that Falcon
was available with the same power-train options as the Fairlane/Torino,
including the 429 c.i.d. Cobra-Jet engine.